Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I remember when Facebook was just for College Students. I reluctantly joined back in 2004 when I was working on my Master’s. The girl I was dating was on it all of the time, so my curiosity led me to give it a try. Everyone had to have a college e-mail address in order to get a profile. I think college students were quick to adopt it because using computers and the Internet was absolutely essential for college even then. Plus, college students seem to like being connected with one another.

According to Wikipedia, Facebook opened itself up to high schoolers in September of 2005, then to anyone over the age of 13 in 2006. That was when the floodgates opened. Now it is likely that your parents or even grandparents have Facebook accounts. Just recently an Internet research company reported that 60% of Internet traffic was separated between Google and Facebook.

In the 4th chapter of the book of John, it seems like Jesus was starting to open the floodgates. Religious belief systems before Jesus was largely separated among geographical and/or ethnic boundaries. Unfortunately, the Samaritans were second-class because they were the offspring of the Jews who intermarried with other tribes against God’s command. The comment said by the Samaritan woman makes it seem like she did not feel good enough for God. When Jesus told her about how true worshippers were not only Jews, she must have felt enormous relief. In the coming centuries people all over the world of all colors and sizes would put their faith in Christ.

In some parts of the world, the word of God is still flowing like it just broke through a dam. I recently heard that Christian Churches in China are constantly multiplying. In other parts of the world it seems more like a large river with incremental, yet largely undetectable increases. No matter how the Church is growing in your area, it is the responsibility of Christians to continue the work. We have a better message than a social networking site. We serve a God who desires to draw all humanity to him. It is that message which breaks through anything.

P.S. For the past few days I have been correcting the capitalization of the first letter of the word “Internet,” yet I did some searching about it today and I found that there is currently a huge debate concerning if it is correct to capitalize the word. Personally, I would vote “no.”